Saturday, September 23, 2006

Bush lost the war on terrorism because he dare not win it

Bush lost the war on terrorism by waging and losing the war against the people of Iraq. The people of Baghdad have suffered most. It is doubtful that Bush has ever killed, captured, or brought to justice a single bona fide terrorist. It is enough for Bush to produce a body and term it a "terrorist" after the fact. Bush, of course, has assumed for himself the power to define terrorist; therefore, a terrorist now may not have been a terrorist earlier and vice versa. You just have to take Bush's word for it from day to day.

Bush's Orwellian use of the word "insurgent" clouds the issue; it deceives the American people and the world. What Bush calls an "insurgency" is most often a "guerrilla" resistance to the US occupation. It was Dick Cheney who claimed -perhaps falsely -that Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq." Sadly, Tim Russert did not press Cheney on this point despite the fact that there is good reason to doubt Cheney who also told us that we would be greeted as liberators.

Casting doubt on Cheney's assertion is the fact that the relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zagawai was a hostile one. At last, Bush has never made a convincing case that either Iraq or Zarqawi had anything at all to do with the events of 911 which he cites as the catch rationale for an endless war. Clearly -this is absurd and especially so when you consider the fact that 911 was never properly or thoroughly investigated.

It was Colin Powell who blamed Al Qaeda for 911. Has anyone seen any convincing evidence that Al Qaeda ever operated out of Iraq? The Washington Post reported that Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda had been disputed even before the US attack and invasion.

A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq.

The fact of the matter is bluntly this: we don't know who planned or executed 911. Various "official conspiracy theories" are full of holes. And we have George W. Bush to thank for forever for obscuring the truth of it.

The war between Shi'ite and Sunni is something else altogether and the US should never have gotten in the cross fire, though we are definitely the catalyst.

Even George W. Bush recently admitted that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 911 but not before he allowed a terminally gullible American public and a sycophantic corporate media to indulge the delusion and spread the lie for years. In normal times, that would have gotten a President impeached. These are not normal times.

These are times that demonstrate a second very important reason Bush has lost the war on terrorism. These are Orwellian times and terrorism is a perpetual war. Bush has lost this war because he dare not win it and cannot afford to win it. It's the only issue he polls well on; without it, he's finished. It is tragically ironic that the future of humankind may very well depend upon the infamously short American attention span inuring a jaded public to a demagogue who is rapidly approaching the limit to which he can ratchet up a rhetoric that millions have already tuned out.

Bush lost the war on terrorism in many others ways. Prominently, Bush never had an enemy, and, most certainly failed to identify one. Terrorism is not a philosophy or an ideology. Terrorism is a tactic that may be exploited by numerous enemies of US imperialism. Terrorism may be employed against US imperialism from a number of opponents at every end of the political spectrum. How does one wage war against a tactic? Enemies of US imperialism are found everywhere in the world. Are we to invade every country and kill every critic? Absurd!

In this case, a war of arms, tanks, and solders is impotent and absurd. The catastrophe in Iraq proves that. Consider the case of World War II, often cited nostalgically by militarists who find in that chapter redemption for our short but bloody history. Americans cling to the myth that we defeated Nazism -but we did not. What we and our allies defeated was the German army. We did not defeat Nazism itself.

Even the Nuremberg Trials -which US prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson hoped would set a precedent for world justice -did not defeat the Nazi ideology which is still alive and well and less underground than is comfortable. That Bush repudiates the Nuremberg Principles, and, in fact, may be in violation of those principles himself, is evidence enough that Nazism is not dead.

Bush's failure demonstrates a basic, common sense principle apparently lost on American liberals who were initially fooled by Bush. That principle is simply: terrorism cannot be defeated with terrorism; a tactic cannot be defeated by employing that tactic. We are what we do. If we employ terrorism, we are terrorists.

If 911 was an act of terrorism because it targeted the civilian population, then the US attack and invasion of Iraq is, likewise, an act of bloody terrorism. The civilian population of Iraq has suffered from American terrorism, blood lust and vengeance.

There is NO evidence that anyone having had anything to do with 911 was, in any way, and at any time since 911, harmed in any way by the bloody, disproportionate and barbaric Blitzkrieg on Baghdad, a Blitzkrieg, lately called "Shock and Awe", that most certainly murdered some 140,000 civilians in the bombing campaign alone.

This is one of a multitude of compelling reasons Bush must not renounce the Geneva convention. It is absurd that he be allowed to try "detainees" and possibly convict them upon "evidence" kept secret from defendants as well as the American public. Bush -a known and practiced liar -simply cannot be trusted. Such an unprecedented overturn of every principle established by Geneva and Nuremberg would guarantee the executions of a limitless number of innocent civilians. There is no justice without accountability. The alternative is tyranny.

The US is not killing terrorists in Iraq; rather, a guerrilla resistance to the illegal US occupation of that nation are killing Americans. If you think the US is killing bona fide terrorists in Iraq, show me one and prove it. Some very astute writers have charged that George w. Bush took the bait. If terrorists there are in Iraq, they were not there before the US attacked and invaded. Terrorists would not have been tolerated by Saddam Hussein. Hussein is credibly reported to have loathed Bin Laden who is at once Bush's whipping boy but absolutely essential to Bush's perpetual, unwinnable war.

The Bush administration never foresaw nor planned for the eruption of three civil wars now raging in Iraq. The separate wars are waged by Kurds in the Northwest, Sunnis and Shi'ites against one another as well as against the so-called "government" in Baghdad. Confusing the issue for a man who cannot no nuance and most certainly lied about reading "...three Shakespeare's" and a Albert Camus, is the fact that the army that he placed in harm's way is in the cross hairs. More importantly, Soldiers are sent into war zones to shoot people. Who is the enemy? Is the enemy Sunni? Shi'ite? Kurd? Who do we shoot? If none of those groups turn out to be the mortal enemy of the US, then what the hell are we doing in Iraq? [See: Terrorist Network Disconnect, Gareth Porter, September 13, 2006]

Americans have begun to see through transparent lies. Bush, therefore, has found it necessary to obscure truth with yet another: we are war with Islamo-fascism. This is not an enemy! Islamo-fascism is a GOP invention, a phony word made up by the right wing blogosphere and GOP consultants desperate for yet another boogie man. Moreover, Islamo-fascism is racist, on a level with rag head, camel jockey, and sand nigger. Bush might as well have said: we are at war with sand niggers. His policies most certainly wage war on everyone but wasps back home.

Bush plays the race card, knowing full well that his base is mostly bigots and extremists for whom any one of any color is the object of condescension or disgust. These are people who would have taken picnic baskets to lynchings. These are people who call Mexican-Americans spicks and pepper bellies. These are people who called the citizens of Viet Nam -whom we were supposed to be defending against the Viet Cong -gooks! Is anyone surprised that Texas Governor Rick Perry would try to link terrorism with immigration from Mexico -never mind that the suggestion is ludicrous on its face. Perry, nevertheless, appears in a Marlboro man jacket with the Rio Grande behind him and tells the people of Texas that to be secure against terrorism, we must secure our borders against immigrants from Mexico. Last time, I checked none of the 911 terrorists came from Mexico. Perry, like Bush, before him exploits fear, suspicion and bigotry. But Kinky Friedman would not be outdone. He recently called New Orleans evacuees "crackheads and thugs". Earlier, he said that " ...sexual predators should be imprisoned and forced to 'listen to a Negro talking to himself."'

Why should we be surprised that millions more now hate America than at any other time in our history? Is every country in the world, then, peopled with potential enemies of the United States? If so, we have only ourselves to blame; our only enemies are the enemies of our creation, the monster from our collective id; they are the blowback of our stupid bigotry, racism, and ruthless yankee imperialism.

Bush dare not win his war on terrorism because it just might turn out to be as fraudulent as everything else about his failed and miserable administration.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe. ...

Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document said its conclusions were not softened or massaged for political purposes...